


In The Lair of the White Wyrm

by 3amepiphany



Series: Drabbles 'n Bits [17]
Category: On The Rain-Slick Precipice Of Darkness, Penny Arcade
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 02:54:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14155092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3amepiphany/pseuds/3amepiphany
Summary: Pest is subjective.





	In The Lair of the White Wyrm

**Author's Note:**

> Just another short sprout from the writing greenhouse - some dialogue work to get a feel for bigger things.

Up ahead of him in the dimness there was a heavy sigh. Tycho shuffled forward a bit and cleared his throat, regretting it immediately as they were kicking up quite a bit of dirt and dust. He coughed violently for a bit until he could breathe again. Gabe had stopped now, but he’d also backed up a bit. The bottoms of his shoes were within reach.

“Are you okay?” he asked, having to lean his head down so he could talk through the crook of his arm.

“I’m okay, thank you. How are you holding up?”

“Well, I have to say… I’m having a bit of an issue here with this.”

“Shoot.”

“So. You said this was a crawlspace.”

“...Yes, I did, didn’t I?”

“You did.” There were a few quiet moments before Gabe cleared his own throat, and Tycho gladly gave them to him. “We’ve been crawling for quite some time.”

“I’d wager it’s been about thirty, maybe forty minutes.” He couldn’t get to the pocket watch in his waistcoat at the moment, but he might if he could shuffle onto his back. “I really hope you haven’t just figured this out now.”

“No. I mean. After some time I felt something was wrong. I honestly was just waiting for you to say something.”

“When did you realize that I wasn’t going to?”

“After I’d told myself that I should wait to see if you would. It more or less became a game of ‘Chicken’. But seeing as how we likely aren’t anywhere near the cellar of that house now, I’m a bit concerned.”

“As am I.”

“When did you start feeling concerned?”

“Gabriel, I’m not going to lie, but it was about thirty, maybe forty minutes ago.”

“Did you somehow know I was wagering a game of ‘Chicken’? Is that why you didn’t say anything”

“No. That’s cute, though. Might keep it mind that you do that.”

“You one-hundred percent don’t need to do that. Please don’t do that. I regret saying that and would love to take it back.”

“I suppose,” Tycho said, with a smug, musical lilt to it. “...What we _do_ need to be doing I think is decide on if we’re going to keep trundling through here like a couple of bunny rabbits, or if we’re going to back our way out into the sunshine and find the _actual_ crawlspace that should be under the house.” At that, Gabe faced his flashlight up on its end, sending light up and over them, and then lowered himself down off his elbows and stretched out, taking full advantage of their break now. Tycho did as well. “It’s just fairly curious. Where does it go? Did we get shunted off? Was the legitimate crawlspace closed up somewhere back there?”

“You don’t suppose old man Grandel’s shoveled dirt over the hole on us already? Rolled that big boulder back over it all, too?”

“Why would you say that? I hadn’t even considered that until now. Why?”

“That’s payback for winning at ‘Chicken’,” the brawler said with a laugh.

“I wasn’t playing ‘Chicken’, I already told you I didn’t know you were mentally playing it. Fucking hell, Gabe.”

“Grandel didn’t bury us in here to die, Tycho, honestly. This is just a creepy crawlspace that probably leads to some weird tunnel system under the rest of town that we don’t know about. Probably used by smugglers and boozers and not at all by some weird eldritch horror awaiting its next meal.” And when Tycho didn’t answer him, he said, “Look, it’s okay to be upset if it isn’t an eldritch horror. We’re starting to get really good at the pest extermination game. Those possums we took care of last month? Aces. You handled that so well. You’re not even scarring from it.”

“I’m not?” He instinctively looked down at his forearm, trying to shine his flashlight at it for a moment before he figured this wasn’t the best light for it.

“You’re not. I say, and this, you can ignore it, I’ll go with you if you want to keep being bunny rabbits down here, but let’s back on out and see if we can talk to his wife. See if she can tell us what it was she saw in the yard chasing their chickens. I haven’t seen a single feather down here.”

“You’re making way too much sense right now.”

“I really just want to make sure we’re not actually buried down here because that would mean I’m wrong.”

“It’d also mean we’d be trapped down here to die, but fuck you,” the scholar said, settling in to start shimmying back through the dirt and dust.

Another thirty or so minutes later they were glad to be back out in the sunshine - Mr. Grandel had not buried them under the house - dusting themselves off and trying to make themselves a bit more presentable, hoping they still appeared to be respectable entrepreneurs and not simply a pair of tousled and rumpled young men who’d been rough-housing in the dirt. To their surprise, Mrs. Grandel was on the wrap-around porch, with a tray of glasses and a pitcher of tea.

“Ah, Mrs. Grandel,” Tycho said, giving a slight bow once he realized she was there.

“Oh, foo,” the slender older woman said, the wispy white hair in her topknot wiggling a bit and her accent far different from her husband’s, who actually appeared to be the one she was staring at as she spoke, “you can call me Arabella. S’pose you’re here looking under the house for the beast.” Her eyes were like emeralds, and seemed to be just as hard.

“It ate the post-boy, Belle, my love,” said Mr. Grandel.

“Mm,” she replied carefully. “Perhaps he shouldn’t have been trying to steal eggs, then, yeah? Startling our birds ”

“I’m-- I’m sorry,” Tycho said, “Did you say it _ate_ the post-boy?” _That_ hadn’t been disclosed. He looked over at Gabe. Then he looked over at Mr. Grandel. “You sent us down a burrow with something that ate someone?”

“I’ve been told you’re great pest exterminators,” he said, blinking owlishly behind his thick glasses lenses.


End file.
